We would usually leave the Woodbrook band somewhere in town and go looking for All Stars or Desperadoes in east Port-of-Spain to hear the sweetest sounding pan and end up sitting down on the pavement sucking oranges on George or Duncan Street. No one ever bothered us. On one occasion we left a friend passed out in the gutter. Next morning he was back with us. Another popular place to turn around and try to catch a band going back to Woodbrook was the parking lot at the western end of what used to be known as Independence Square. It was ideal for emptying our bladders before we found the toilets in Woodford Square to be hysterically sterile and comfortable. On J'Ouvert morning, no less!
J'Ouvert was bacchanal.
One J'Ouvert morning began with us frantically looking for a member of my immediate family and finding him sleeping on the floor under the table in the pantry. He had gone to the Holiday Inn Sunday night fete just down Wrightson Road, come home drunk and collapsed under the table. We sobered him up with black coffee. He became quite lucent for about an hour.Coming down Tragarete Road in Invaders, as we passed the cemetery, he tried to jump the cemetery wall to go and see our ancestral grave and was dissuaded with some difficulty.
I believe that was also the J'Ouvert when he passed out on Charlotte Street and I had to carry him home to Scott Bushe Street through Woodford Square, the Red House and down Charles Street. My legs gave out as we entered the square and we collapsed baadang onto the pavement. A good lady selling freshly cut oranges, dinner mints and cigarettes by the stick cried out, "Oh gord!Yuh kill him!" I dropped him twice more, once onto the galvanise fence that ran from Scott Bushe Street to Shine Street-and the dent must still be there-and then as I tried to lower him gently down onto the sofa in the gallery, his head got away and hit the wall boodup!
J'Ouvert finished early that year. Most of the time we would be on the road until 10 o'clock, pushing pan back up Tragarete to the panyard. J'Ouvert was satire, often of the bitterest sort. The Pope came to visit Trinidad in early February 1985. Carnival was two weeks later. We ended up in "Outvaders" that year. "Outvaders" was made up of a motley collection of carts and vehicles and unbelievable characters that spontaneously formed at the back of Invaders Steelband every J'Ouvert and played their own tunes on bottle and spoon and hard iron. The rhythm was always enthrallingly infectious and tantalisingly contagious. At some time in the proceedings, someone, I never found out who, dressed as the Pope, jumped up onto the tray of a small truck and proceeded to bless all and sundry for the next two hours while "his" subjects danced and pranced beneath him.
I suppose if we tried that with any other religion we would be ostracised for life, if not threatened by certain religious groups who take themselves far too seriously. And then there were the disguises. I myself once spent a J'Ouvert in a dressing gown and cross, blessing people on Park Street and there must have been many who thought I was a priest. I wore it thereafter for years. My uncle wore my father's red and black football jersey until it fell apart and swore he had never washed it. The "old woman" outfit complete with bonnet that Sil Dopson, a true true veteran of J'Ouvert, played in for too many years to count.
The guys who year after year came out in diapers and baby bottles filled with rum, some in a baby carriage pushed by a big-busted momma. The others dressed as "baby dolls" in negligee and high heels. J'Ouvert was sweet madness and you cannot teach or explain it to anyone. Either you take it in or you don't.